


wounds

by RestlessWanderings



Category: Star Wars Prequel Trilogy, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Obi-Wan Needs a Hug, Obi-Wan is just a bit bitter, and by a bit I mean a lot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-20
Updated: 2017-12-20
Packaged: 2019-02-17 16:13:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,874
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13080558
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RestlessWanderings/pseuds/RestlessWanderings
Summary: When Force Ghost Qui-Gon suddenly appears on Tatooine, Obi-Wan says some things he's been meaning to say for a very long time.





	wounds

**Author's Note:**

> listen i know it doesn't seem like it but i actually do love qui-gon i just think he did a lot of shitty things and i wanted bitter!obi-wan. i wanted obi-wan being done with people treating him like shit and laying down the law. obi-wan calling qui-gon out and defending himself.
> 
> (this definitely isn't me projecting pffftttt no not at all)

For a moment he can’t believe his eyes. His mug drops from limp fingers, clay shards scattering across the dirt floor, the tea turning it to mud. He blinks, but the apparition doesn’t disappear.

_Of course,_ Obi-Wan thinks, sucking in a breath. _Of course this would happen. Why am I even surprised anymore, when crazy, impossible things happen around me?_

Qui-Gon Jinn stares back at him, unmoving, eyes wide and mouth somewhat agape. If Obi-Wan didn’t know better, he’d say Jinn was just as shocked as himself.

“You,” he says, barely audible, crossing his arms. His ears are ringing. _“You.”_ he says again, voice raspy but louder. He curls his hands into fists and grinds his teeth together, unable to stop the snarl from rolling across his face.

Jinn appears not to have expected such a reaction, his eyebrows rising and a frown forming. Obi-Wan almost wants to laugh, but the feeling evaporates when his former Master opens his mouth.

Obi-Wan cuts him off. _“Don’t!”_ he says, drawing himself up to full height. “Don’t say a single word, _Master,”_ he says, the last word rolling off his tongue like venom. His heart beats hard against his chest as if preparing for battle. His right hand unclenches and goes for his hip, expecting a saber and finding none.

Jinn’s eyes grow wider. “Padawan, what –”

“You have no _right,”_ Obi-Wan snarls, throat tight, “no right at all to call me that. You lost that right when you abandoned me in front of the Council all those years ago. You lost that right when you threw me away like garbage for some shiny new apprentice." 

Jinn rears back, brows furrowing and eyes narrowing. He lifts his chin and glares down his nose at Obi-Wan, saying, “I may be dead, but –”

The laugh that escapes Obi-Wan’s throat is harsh. “Oh yes, Jinn, you are dead. Very much so. As are all the rest of the Jedi.” He shakes his head, mouth pulling up into a hollow smile. “You missed quite the action in your absence. Your Chosen One worked out quite well in the end, though his bringing about this famed _balance_ ended up quite bloody.” 

It’s too much. He’s hyperaware of his body, of the dust and sand drifting in the air, catching fire in the shafts of sunlight streaming into his home. His body is tingling and he has to fold his arms across his chest so that he doesn’t wring his tunic in his hands. There’s a headache forming behind his right eye, one that pounds in beat with his pulse.

Jinn’s glare worsens, becomes the infamous Jinn Glare that haunted his padawanship with the man. “Anakin’s Fall,” Obi-Wan flinches but if Jinn notices he doesn’t care, “is not my fault. I left you in charge of him. _You_ were the one –”

“But that’s the problem, Jinn, it’s _never_ your fault. Nothing is ever your fault, except Xanatos’ Fall.” Obi-Wan snorts. “Congratulations, Jinn, you shouldered all the blame of the one thing that, in reality, was not entirely your fault.”

Jinn shakes his head. “You should have –”

“Shut up,” Obi-Wan snarls. His hands tremble and his eyes burn. He hears the sharp sound of pottery breaking and mourns his plates for a moment before the anger comes roiling back in, leaving a white-hot ball at the center of his chest. It crawls up into his throat and constricts his lungs until he’s breathing sharply through gritted teeth.

“There are many things I should have done, but I’m not wasting breath on my mistakes. I’ve owned up to them. I’ve rethought my every action a hundred times, figuring out what I should have done, what I could have done, what I needed to do differently. I’ve accepted my fault in all of this.” He glares at Jinn, satisfaction bubbling up when Jinn shrinks back a bit. “You, though, have a lot to apologize to me for.”

Jinn sighs, his shoulders drooping. He rubs a hand across his face. “This is not how I pictured this going,” he says after a few moments of silence. 

Obi-Wan quirks a brow. “Oh? What did you think? That I’d be sobbing on my knees, begging for your forgiveness?” He snorts again. “I would’ve if this had happened a few years ago, but Tatooine lends itself to self-reflection. Tell me, _Master,_ what have you learned of yourself in death?”

The look he gives Obi-Wan is so heavy, so grief-ridden, that Obi-Wan’s heart aches. “Not enough, it seems.”

Obi-Wan pushes away the sympathy he feels welling up. He doesn’t have room for it, not yet, not now. “No, not nearly enough. Death has yet to change you, has it, _Master?”_

Jinn sighs. “Pada –”

“I told you not to call me that,” Obi-Wan spits. “You lost that right. Hells, I don’t know of you’ve _ever_ had the right to call me your padawan,” Obi-Wan says, running a hand through his hair. He wants to move, wants, to pace, but stands his ground. “You never wanted me. I was forced on you by Yoda. You only accepted me after I cheerfully offered to blow myself up for you, but even that wasn’t enough, was it?” 

Jinn ducks his head and Obi-Wan almost feels bad, but these wounds have been left to fester for far too long and he can’t stop his tongue even if he wanted to. “It took you _years_ to warm up to me. Years of my being the perfect padawan, of living by the Code word for word, in the most literal way I could take it. It took years to forge a good relationship between us, one that was barely healthy and full of mines ready to blow. And yet every time I followed the Force, _just_ as you instructed me to, you turned on me. You abandoned me left and right.”

Jinn looks up at that, eyes narrowed. “If you’re referring to Melida/Daan, I seem to recall it was you who abandoned me.”

Obi-Wan rears back as if stung, his heart constricting from the verbal blow. The ringing in his ears turns sharp, driving like a nail into his eardrums. “What,” he says, and his voice is hollow, breathy, like the voices of slaves he’s encountered at markets. “What did you just say?”

Jinn draws himself up again, jaw jutting out. “It was not I who abandoned you on Melida/Daan, but you who abandoned me.”

The snap of Obi-Wan’s control is nearly audible. Around him things creak and groan under the Force pressure. From his periphery he spots his small, creaky bed floating a few inches in the air. He’s shaking, hands clenched so tight he can feel his nails breaking the skin of his palms.

“You dare put the blame of Melida/Daan on my shoulders?” he grounds out, glaring at the floor, unable to look at Jinn for fear he’ll lash out at the ghost. “I was a _child,_ Jinn.”

“You were also a padawan.”

“I was a child!” Obi-Wan’s head whips up and his furniture crashes to the ground as he steps forward. He stops an arm’s length away from Jinn, whose calm façade has finally broken. Jinn is tensed as if ready to block a blow or take one.

“I was a padawan, but more than that I was a child. Children make mistakes. I needed someone who would not judge me or demean me for my mistakes, who would not abandon me at the drop of a hat. I needed you to help me learn from them, not banish me for them.

“I just –” Obi-Wan steps away from Jinn, rubbing a hand across his face. He takes a deep breath, tries to center himself, and fails. There’s not much to center himself in these days, his mind too heavily scarred from Order 66, the War, hells, even his life before all of that.

He takes another deep breath. Rolls his shoulders. Unclenches his fists. Shakes his head. The anger bleeds away and leaves him feeling empty and cold.

He hugs himself and stares at the dirt floor. “I just needed you to love me. Like any Master would love their student. I needed you to guide me without the expectation of my being perfect. I didn’t want to be afraid of making mistakes, even the smallest ones, but you made me afraid of that. I know we had our differences, and I know you never really wanted me, but you could’ve at least tried, in the beginning, to be what I needed rather than pushing me away at every turn.” 

There’s a long pause, long enough that Obi-Wan almost begins to clean up the broken mug and dishes.

“I can’t change the past. I can’t be what you needed then,” Jinn says. “But I can be what you need now. What do you need from me?”

Obi-Wan looks up and stares into glacial blue eyes, eyes that have looked at him with disdain, mistrust, betrayal, condescension – a thousand and one things that any adult, let alone a father-figure, should not look at their child with. 

“I need you to go,” Obi-Wan says.

Jinn looks stricken, mouth agape and eyes wide, watering. Obi-Wan imagines all the blood draining from Jinn’s face, imagines the cold seeping into his veins, imagines the moment his stomach drops and realization sets in.

“I need you to leave until you can admit the wrongs you’ve done, especially to me. I won’t take any more of this banthashit, Jinn. I don’t have the patience for it. If you’re not going to apologize for all of those years of harsh treatment, of abandonment, of literally forgetting my existence at times, then, well,” he huffs and shrugs, “I don’t want you here. So leave.”

Jinn shudders, hands gripping onto his robe as if it’s the only thing keeping him anchored. “Is there,” he clears his throat, “is there any chance you can ever forgive me, Obi-Wan?” 

“I don’t know Jinn. You hurt me. You scarred me. I’m not saying you’re the reason for my every bad decision, for my every failed relationship, but what you put me through as a padawan impacted me for the rest of my life, and not always in the best ways. So no, Jinn, I don’t know if I can ever fully forgive you.”

Obi-Wan gives the man one last look before turning towards the kitchen. He bends down and picks up the largest shards of his broken mug, putting them on the countertop.

When he turns back, Jinn is still there, staring at him, lost. 

Obi-Wan shakes his head, a rueful smile pulling at his mouth. “You’ll never change Jinn. Now leave.”

He blinks and Jinn is gone, the only hint of his existence the mess in Obi-Wan’s home and the hollowness in his chest. He sighs.

“I probably could have handled that with a bit more care,” he says to the empty air. But something in him has righted himself, something cut now sewn back together. 

He’s been treated wrongly for too long, and though he knows it’s far too late to put everyone who has hurt him in their place, he hums as he begins putting the pieces of his mug back together.


End file.
